Opinion: Liberal reversal on climate policy will prove costly

Martyn Brown, Special to the Sun04.11.2013

Martyn Brown is the author of the ebook, Towards A New Government In British Columbia, available on Amazon. He was former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s long-serving chief of staff, the top strategic adviser to three provincial party leaders, and a former deputy minister of tourism, trade and investment.

To put it mildly, things were not going well for Carole James and the NDP. They had endured a brutal week of campaign missteps and blunders. They were getting hammered for opposing much of Premier Gordon Campbell’s climate action plan, especially the carbon tax that was so strongly supported by many of the NDP’s traditional backers.

Earth Day. It was a chance to regain ground on the issue of the environment that the NDP had largely ceded to the B.C. Green Party, and even to the B.C. Liberals. It was a day made for photo ops to highlight the need for environmental leadership. So what did the NDP do?

Their leader escorted the media on a three-hour aerial tour to disparage the environmental impacts of Liberal-supported run-of-river energy projects. That little photo op burned over 400 litres of fuel that certainly didn’t help the planet on Earth Day. No matter, the NDP countered. Its chartered aircraft’s emissions would be nullified through offsets purchased from Vancouver-based Offsetters. Yes, that would be the same company just cited by the auditor general in his damning report on the Pacific Carbon Trust.

It got worse that day. Not only was James forced to admit she had never visited a run-of-river project, but it turned out two of her candidates had supported the type of renewable energy projects she vowed to ban. Three of the projects she targeted were actually approved or built during the last NDP government’s time in office. Oops.

Fast forward, to April 22, 2013 — Earth Day 2013. This year’s theme is “The Face of Climate Change.”

Somehow I doubt Christy Clark’s picture will be featured on the sponsor organization’s website. Her government’s flat-out rejection of the auditor general’s criticisms about the Pacific Carbon Trust won’t win it a lot of fans, even from those who believe in the potential value of offsets. That aside, the Clark government has largely dismantled the climate action plan her party so happily endorsed as it helped carry them back to power in 2009.

The massive increases to greenhouse gas emissions that will result from the proposed liquefied natural gas plants, pipelines and associated natural gas development will spell the death knell for British Columbia’s legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets. Indeed, those targets are already so far out of reach — with no credible plan to close the gap — they are about as believable as the Liberals’ re-election chances. Remote, to say the least.

It is patently dishonest to pretend we can achieve a 33-per-cent reduction in greenhouse gas below 2007 levels by 2020. We can’t possibly get there by dramatically increasing industrial emissions at the same time as we are gutting greenhouse gas reduction strategies that weren’t enough to do the job in the first place. We should at least be honest about that fact.

That target won’t be achieved by powering new LNG plants with new gas-fired electricity and then pretending those “clean energy” emissions won’t add to B.C.’s emissions stack. Of course they will, just as our failures to properly fund and expedite rapid transit plans will make it impossible to cut vehicle emissions to the levels necessary to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Allowing new carbon tax exemptions for certain industrial sectors, as the Clark government has recently done, will further compound the problem. So will its announced five-year freeze on the carbon tax, however politically popular that might be. Nor is a cap-and-trade system on B.C.’s horizon anytime soon, even though it, too, was central to the climate action plan.

By contrast, Premier Alison Redford is moving Alberta toward a “40/40 plan.” It purports to improve the existing 12-per-cent mandated reductions in industrial emissions intensity to 40 per cent below their baseline. At the same time, the charge for emissions in excess of those targets would rise from $15 a tonne currently, to $40 a tonne.

It is also noteworthy that just this week, British Columbia’s carbon tax was being lauded in the Wall Street Journal by former U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz, and by Nobel Prize in economics winner Gary Becker. They are now arguing that the United States should follow B.C.’s example, with a carbon tax that is revenue neutral and that also returns every penny collected in new tax rebates or tax cuts.

At the very time when Clark should be boldly advancing her predecessor’s efforts to put a market price on carbon emissions that is predictable, transparent and increasingly costly to B.C.’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, she is instead freezing the carbon tax at $30 a tonne. It will be interesting to see if the NDP plans to increase that tax to perhaps lower MSP premiums or to fund investments in rapid transit or other “green” priorities.

The Clark government’s back-pedalling on climate actions has lost the Liberals a lot of support critical to its victory in 2009. Yet the NDP’s lack of firm leadership on the issue has also cost it support.

Jane Sterk’s B.C. Green Party is looking to make a major breakthrough this election, as Elizabeth May did federally last time around. Her party is suddenly a seriously credible option for voters in at least two traditional Liberal strongholds.

Only four years ago, noted climatologist Andrew Weaver was backing the B.C. Liberal climate action strategy he had helped craft as a member of Gordon Campbell’s Climate Action Task Force. Today, he’s running in Oak Bay-Gordon Head to become the B.C. Green Party’s first MLA. His colleague Adam Olsen, in Saanich North and the Islands, also has a serious shot for the Greens. And Sterk will be in the leaders’ debates, better known and better prepared this time. In an election the NDP seems destined to win by a wide margin, many will be voting for independents or third-party candidates who best reflect their values.

“Change for the better, one practical step at a time” may be the NDP’s winning slogan. But on Earth Day and on May 14, it may be equally a message tailor-made for B.C.’s Green Party.

Martyn Brown is the author of the ebook, Towards A New Government In British Columbia, available on Amazon. He was former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s long-serving chief of staff, the top strategic adviser to three provincial party leaders, and a former deputy minister of tourism, trade and investment.

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Opinion: Liberal reversal on climate policy will prove costly

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